Pulling Down The Walls
by Naoki1
Summary: The Sorting Hat ponders on the nature of choices, it's birth and the Founders...


Title: Pulling Down The Walls  
  
Chapter: 1/1  
  
Author: Naoki / Naoki_pyromaniac@hotmail.com  
  
Rating/Warnings/Categories: PG, pre-Harry Hogwarts, Founders cameos!  
  
Disclaimer: All characters are JKR's.  
  
~*~   
  
Pulling Down The Walls  
  
~*~  
  
It sat on the highest shelf, a Hat, just a simple wizard's hat who had belonged to anything but a simple wizard. It sat beside a jar of Honeyduke's Fudge, a stack of musty books and other items too unloved to have been taken by the last Headmaster.   
  
And the Hat thought, deeply, while it waited for the new Headmaster. It thought about it's birth because it was a magical fabulous Sorting Hat, not typical at all, as it was keen to point out to the new students…yet it had never eluded to how it came to be this way.   
  
It seemed odd and wrong, to the Hat, that one moment it had been fraying, perched on top of Godric Gryffindor's head and the next, it had a mind. That's what made it difficult to explain, how had it gone from nothing to having a mind?   
  
Not a usual, typical, conscious mind but one that seemed to fizz like a Flying Whizzbee and rippled like an electric storm. After knowing, and somehow it knew how it had felt back then, a complete blank...the four gave him too much, too fast.   
  
Perhaps most of it was to do with magic, but magic didn't explain everything. Logic came into it too, and philosophy and simple belief all played a part.   
  
They put a little of themselves in each incantation and so the Hat knew. It knew about each of them, it knew how one loved the other, adored the other...even hated the other.   
  
And even though it was a humble Hat, worn and drooping, it felt... (feelings had taken so long to get used to but now he recognised them with ease)...that Hogwarts was in trouble even then.   
  
They had told him what they wanted for their students, the first hastily; almost forcing his voice back to its lazy drawl said he would only have the pure ones, those who believed in true purity, the ambitious ones.   
  
The dark haired woman asked for the studious ones, the ones with sharp wit and minds and the quiet, thoughtful man with the sword hanging at his side, a leg swung up over a chair's arm almost decadently, said he would take the brave, the courageous, the ones who would fight.  
  
The Hat remembered with a cold feeling that Gryffindor didn't say what they had to fight for or even what they should fight for.   
  
The elegant man and woman looked at each other, smiling faintly, obviously at the vague yet foreboding irritation of the tall man in the shadows with emerald eyes.   
  
"Who will have the others...when all the gifted have been taken?" asked the Hat, it always remembered those words, because they were the first.   
  
Silence.   
  
The faired haired witch in the corner spoke next, quietly, "I will" - spinning her wand between her fingertips - "I only believe in hard work and loyalty...I will take the rest, Hat, for the House of Hufflepuff"  
  
"Helga, you are one of the most powerful witches of your time...if anything, you deserve only the best" the tall wizard muttered, scowling as the witch regarded him coolly.  
  
"Blood of my students will always pale to their dedication, Slytherin, their wit and courage will not mark them out from the others. They will be equal...they will not squabble over petty matters"   
  
The smiles on Gryffindor and Ravenclaw faded, as if they were ashamed of their earlier words but it was too late, the decisions had been made and so the Houses were formed.  
  
The Hat never felt as alive as it did when it saw Slytherin's expression as Hufflepuff swept out, as he saw Godric's firmly set look clash with the others.   
  
It was coming apart at the seams, it knew that instantly, and he knew what they had tried to do but it hadn't worked, of course it hadn't.   
  
It sorted the students of that year, mentioning it's fears in a song, even while the green eyed wizard clenched his hand around his goblet so tightly that his knuckles turned a painful looking white.   
  
On reflection, the Hat knew it should have been more tactful but it remembered those first few minutes as it entered this strange world of knowing and feeling and being able to make choices, limited choices, but it had them.  
  
And they had made their choices.   
  
Every year he created Hufflepuffs, Gryffindors, Ravenclaws and Slytherins. And in the early days, it had thought that it was wrong to do so but as the years passed, it realised it was not making choices, not real choices, it was up to the student if they made the choice to follow the path set out hundreds and hundreds of years ago.   
  
But none of them had gotten it right, until it was placed on the head of him.   
  
A powerful mind, separated from the equality by his very skills...though he would fight for them, he would fight for all of them...and for the right reasons.   
  
"Gryffindor!"  
  
And so many years later, when the door of the study opened as the new Headmaster of Hogwarts came to take his place, the Hat smiled to itself.   
  
This one was getting it right. Finally.   
  
He was making choices, the right choices.   
  
The Hat spoke up eventually, beaming at the very thought, at the very presence of the man but he kept the greeting simple and the tone even although it drove it close to madness to do so.   
  
"Good day, Albus"  
  
A rather bland and typical greeting for the greatest wizard of his day…no, thought the Hat, he could have shown the Founders a thing or two about how Hogwarts should have been…could have been.   
  
And so the Hat waits. It will wait forever if that's how long Albus Dumbledore will take to unite them, because he will, the Hat knows it. Could tell from the Sorting. And for the first time, the Hat senses hope…not dreaded nostalgia, but real hope for the future.   
  
It was going to be a wonderful school year.   
  
~*~ 


End file.
